Canton Looks At Building New Sports Fields

CANTON — — A proposal for several much-needed sports playing fields on a town-owned parcel on Lawton Road may come to the board of selectmen later this month.

The parks and recreation department is in the process of finalizing plans for the project and was set to have an informal discussion about them with the inland wetlands commission on Thursday. Recreation Director Brian Wilson said he hopes to bring the plans to the parks and recreation commission when it meets on Nov. 19. The board of selectmen meet on Nov. 28 and First Selectman Richard Barlow said the project could be presented to the board then.

Plans call for one full-size playing field that could be used for a variety of sports along with two to four smaller practice fields. The parcel has 19 acres but Martin said much of it cannot be developed because of a steep slope and wetlands on it.

"Our main purpose is to have more playing fields for youth sports programs in town," Martin said. "Those programs have been growing but we are working with the same amount of playing space that we have always had."

In addition to fields, a playground would be built along with parking. Martin said the town may also use the property to extend the bicycle path that runs through town. The cost of developing the site is being finalized, he said.

The town has owned the property since the 1960s and Barlow said the town originally planned to build a school there. Those plans never went forward and except for a period when a community garden was there the land has been unused since then.

Growing pressure for playing fields has pushed town officials to consider the land for that purpose, even though much of it cannot be built on. Barlow said there is a limited amount of flat land in town that is suitable for playing fields and that a study done a few years ago identified the Lawton Road parcel as one of the few where something could be done.

"It's been looked at several times in the past 20 years but for one reason or another doing something there never got any traction," Martin said. "But in the past five years sports programs at Canton High School have doubled and the youth sports leagues have increased too."